As I get older, I am slowly accepting my identity as a math nerd.

When I was informed that PCs in "New Gods of Mankind" are gods with maximum miracle points dictated by number of worshippers, my first thought was, "Hey, that's a good problem for exponential and logistic growth functions!"

Some handy applets show both functions at:
http://www.otherwise.com/population/exponent.html
http://www.otherwise.com/population/logistic.html

Basically, worshippers are capital for gods:  that capital pays off in "Faith" and "Terror," both of which can be used to pay for miracles.  In fact, the whole thing resembles a budget problem.

The gods basically need to grow the number of "taxpayers" -- I mean, worshippers.

Thus gods of fertility and childhood health and abundant food have an obvious long-term advantage.

This leads to a free-rider problem.  If a group of three or four players all run gods, probably only one will be a fertility/abundance god.  Others may be gods of war or gods of knowledge -- very useful for keeping the game going, but with less growth potential.  Thus gods who "free-ride" on the party can grow their worshipper populations directly.

Of course, gods of seduction and mind-control might try to poach worshippers from other party members...

As far as I have been told, the rules do not allow players to share worshippers.  That seems a little silly to me.  I would have assumed that there would be a lot of rules about the difference between strictly one-god devotion and polytheistic pluralism.

Anyway, it's not very likely I'll play or run a game of "New Gods of Mankind."

However, the strategic considerations outlined above apply to any game where player resources can grow exponentially or logistically subject to one player's influence.

what game is this, again?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;265103what game is this, again?

New Gods of Mankind: see here for a brief review. I managed to nab a copy of New God's Handbook, basically the player's guide, when it was freely available during the, well, Free RPG Day.

Very interesting. For some reason Scion, didn't work for me. But this....this looks like something I could have fun with.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;265218For some reason Scion, didn't work for me.

Note that unlike Scion, NGoM is set in a prehistorical fantasy world with no connection to real Earth. As I recall, the project started out as Of Gods and Men, a strategy game inspired by Nobilis, and that strategy element is still included in there as an optional play style. In some ways it's a bit like, say, Populous.

Quote from: GrimGent;265443Note that unlike Scion, NGoM is set in a prehistorical fantasy world with no connection to real Earth. As I recall, the project started out as Of Gods and Men, a strategy game inspired by Nobilis, and that strategy element is still included in there as an optional play style. In some ways it's a bit like, say, Populous.

Good point. I'm still unsure though why Scion failed to grab me and games like Nephilim and Aria did. Maybe it has something to with the whole World of Darkness set up.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;265457I'm still unsure though why Scion failed to grab me and games like Nephilim and Aria did. Maybe it has something to with the whole World of Darkness set up.

Strictly speaking Scion (as a separate game line of its own) isn't set in the WoD, but instead in another version of our Earth where gods are real but only now have reason to interfere with the mortal world again. That's why comments about the lack of mundane setting details in the books tend to get responses like "just look out the window."